Yunior García Aguilera is a Cuban actor, playwright, and activist, founder of Trébol Teatro and the Facebook group Archipiélago. He was born in Holguín, Cuba in 1982.
His long and solid theatrical career began when he was just in fourth grade, writing and performing alongside classmates. In his hometown of Holguín, he joined the Asociación Hermanos Saíz (AHS), which allowed him to gain experience and publish his works. He took on the artistic direction of the theatrical company Alas Buenas, whose play, Sangre, won seven awards at the National Small Format Festival in Santa Clara.
At 17, he entered the National School of Art (ENA), specializing in acting. In 2003, he founded the Trébol Teatro project along with young actors who graduated from ENA, with the aim of creating their own discourse and a creative and innovative space. That same year, he completed his studies as an actor at the ISA (Higher Institute of Art), graduating with a gold degree.
He has written scripts for television and film. Pig (Fiction short film produced in 2018) was showcased at the 40th edition of the Latin American Film Festival.
Yunior was one of the key figures of the November 27, 2020 (27N) protests held in front of the Ministry of Culture (MINCULT) by a group of artists, intellectuals, activists, and the general public in response to the events that occurred at the San Isidro Movement headquarters the night before. On November 26, the police cleared out the young people who had taken refuge at that location in order to demand the government's release of the rapper Denis Solís González. Some had also been on hunger strike for several days.
From this peaceful demonstration, a group was democratically selected to meet with the Deputy Minister of Culture, Fernando Rojas, and other government representatives. The goal was to engage in dialogue in order to achieve agreements that would respect creative freedoms, freedom of expression, and press freedom, as well as to put an end to the repression of artists whose work deviates from the official message established by the Cuban regime. Yunior was part of the group alongside Katherine Bisquet, Tania Bruguera , Camila Acosta, and others.
The playwright made headlines again following the events that took place in Cuba on July 11, 2021 (11J), when people across the island spontaneously took to the streets in a historic demonstration against living conditions, poor government management, and a lack of freedoms. He was peacefully protesting alongside other young artists outside the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) when they were violently forced into a garbage truck by State Security agents.
Subsequently, he was transferred to the Vivac prison in Arroyo Naranjo and released days later under a precautionary measure that prohibited him from going out onto the street. From his home, García Aguilera became one of the most visible faces of this social upheaval. He granted interviews to numerous international media outlets, in which he defended the right of the Cuban people to build a different country while denouncing the violent repression that resulted in several disappearances and the unjust imprisonment of more than 600 protesters.
In July 2021, the Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez published a statement in which he questioned the police repression against the protesters during the 11J demonstrations. Yunior responded to Silvio with a post on his social media that quickly went viral, in which he asked the musician for 15 minutes of dialogue. Days later, this meeting took place at the Ojalá studios of the troubadour.
García Aguilera defines himself as “a civic artist who wants to build a better country where his son can express his thoughts without facing violence in the streets and can think however he wants without having to emigrate”. He does not consider himself a politician, but rather "a citizen who fosters ideas and wants to transform his reality, advocating for a horizontal leadership, based on consensus, where collective intelligence prevails and power and decisions do not rest on a single figure".*(1)
On August 9, 2021, Archipiélago was created, a Facebook group with over 23,000 followers, aimed at giving a voice to all Cubans who wish to build a new Cuba, without excluding the exile or the diaspora, while also setting concrete goals for that construction.
Those objectives are:
1. Fight for the liberation of all individuals who were detained on July 11, 2021.
2. Attempt to carry out the first authorized peaceful anti-government demonstration with all legal guarantees, without repression or violent incidents.
3. Call for a plebiscite with all the guarantees provided by the 2019 constitution that allows for the sovereign will of the Cuban people to be decided at the polls.
In September 2021, Archipiélago requested authorization from the Government to march against violence in Havana on November 20th. In the following days, other provinces of the island submitted this request to their respective Provincial Government offices, thereby joining the call.
Like other activists, Yunior has been besieged in his own home, preventing him from moving freely. He has been interrogated several times by State Security officers and is subjected to daily harassment by repression agencies, even being monitored by up to eight agents at a time.
On October 4, 2021, the Center for the Study of the Rule of Law, Cuba Próxima, announced the addition of the playwright to its Deliberative Council.
Source:
(1) and (2) taken from Proyecto Archipiélago, interview with Mónica Baró, August 13, 2021, 23yFlagler
